August 11, 2000

What Lies Beneath

By PETER M. NICHOLS

VIOLENCE At its climax, the film becomes extremely violent. For one thing, Claire and Norman should stay away from bathtubs.

SEX The neighbors may be having problems, but they are noisy love-makers. As for the Spencers, their sex life is discussed and sometimes partly in view, with discreet fadeouts. At one point Claire becomes possessed with the spirit of Maddie, which heats up the suggestiveness considerably.

PROFANITY Some, but it is appropriate and used sparingly.

FOR WHICH CHILDREN?

UNDER AGE 12 This isn't for them, or shouldn't be. The violence is realistic, and the frights are too intense.

AGES 12 AND UP The young ran riot in "Scream" and the like, and here the old folks take a comparatively sedate crack at it. Drawn by the horror genre, some teenagers might be entertained by people their parents' age wheezing around that territory. Others won't be.

dd how the front door opens by itself and won't stay closed. And a certain picture keeps toppling, breaking the glass in its frame. The dog is acting weird. Also, the tub keeps filling to the rim. Claire Spencer (Ms. Pfeiffer) is not drawing a bath, nor is her husband, Norman (Mr. Ford), a prominent university geneticist. Their daughter is away at school. So who is that woman in the steamy bathroom?

"There's a ghost in my house," Claire tells a psychiatrist. "I saw her in the water by the bathtub." The doctor advises her to get a ouija board and look into the matter. Norman, preoccupied with his work in the way people like Norman always are in this kind of movie, is both concerned about and annoyed with his wife, a budding semi-hysteric made none the calmer by too little to do around the stunning lakeside property that they have inherited from his father.

When Claire first mentions sensing another presence, Norman suggests that it could be his father rattling around the house, assessing the renovations. Very funny. No, this apparition is young and blond. At first Claire suspects that it could be the woman next door, who seems to have disappeared after some nasty altercations with her husband. But when the Spencer computer turns itself on a few times, she uses it to track a set of initials and positively identify her friend in the bathroom as one Madison Elizabeth Frank, a student who has been missing.

The movie makes no secret of the fact that Norman had an affair with Maddie. From there, though, you are on your own.